Unless I missed your point entirely, you can easily generate 3-4 misses in a row with this system too. There's no real difference between generating a sequence of numbers once and generating a sequence one number at a time, provided you don't generate the same number twice, which we don't.

Misses - sure. This is why I called it not rigged.Just not 20 in a row... And not 3 misses in a row with a 95% probability to hit (on a d20).It's more of a soft cap on how unlucky you can get and how hard is it to get there.I think it might be enought to smooth things to a point where RNG doesn't seem so unfair.

P.S. If you would consider going down that road - you'll probably want a "personalized" random sequence for every entity (or at least Player and world). And a reshuffle on loading a savegame.

More options is always good, allowing players to customize their playing experience is great.

I voted for the rigging because yes, missing 90% chance is painful, and several in a row is just nuts. It comes down to how often do we get to fire per turn. In JA2, a single miss usually isn't a big deal, because you have 6+ mercenaries who can all fire three, four or even five times. With smaller squad sizes (the nuXcom are limited at 4 soldiers?) and fewer firing opportunities (once or twice a turn), the perceived "value" of each shot grows much larger. AFAIK, The New World is leaning towards very small "squads" and with very limited AP for combat, which is why I'm definitely voting for rigging the system.

This completely depends on what you aim to achiev in the game. However I really don't think you should.

Sometimes when I play a non-killing machine character in AoD and still want to kill through some tough fights my only chance to do this is to ~~ get 3 hits (and 1 crit) in a row at THC 60% and avoid being killed in 2 turns with 4 dodge. Of course this is only achievable via multiple save and reload and it is always MY choice whether to do the save/reloads or not. If you tweak the mechanics it will be much harder for a player to get thorough as save and reload will be much less effective and is likely to de facto lead to another instance of content gating.

2) If yes, how? Meaning what should we aim it? What outcomes should never ever happen when your THC is 70-80%?

If you still will decide to tweak, you can consider using a pseudo random distribution

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ExampleSlardar Slardar's Bash of the Deep has a 25% chance to stun the target. On the first attack, however, it only has an ~8.5% probability to bash. Each subsequent attack without a bash increases the probability by ~8.5%. So on the second attack, the chance is ~17%, on the third it is ~25.5%, etc. After a bash occurs, the probability resets to ~8.5% for the next attack. These probabilities average out so that, over a moderate period of time, Bash of the Deep procs nearly 25% of the time.

It would also be a good option to use a predetermined seed for the RNG, so that reloading a save could not, by itself produce different results in combat, when picking a lock, et cetera. The player would have to try different tactics or increase their skills.

I remember this being available in Xcom, Basilisk's Eschalon games, and others. Maybe it should be a hard-coded, non-optional aspect to prevent save-scumming. It's kind of nice, a relief to play a game where cheap shortcuts are not even available to you. Lead me not into temptation…

It's easy to say you're in favor of pure randomness in theory, far removed from actually experiencing its results, but the "deck of cards" approach you describe sounds like a fair representation of the odds. Maybe there should be more than ten cards in the deck, though, or players will count them and outcomes might be too predictable. A shoe of 1d10 decks of 10 cards each, maybe. Or was ten cards just an example by way of simplification?

Could also have the option of employing a natural phenomenon, like data from a camera with the lens cap on, to derive true true randomness that no algorithm can provide.

If you save the seed then a particularly unlucky sequence will always repeat, thus making the fight impossible to win (assuming it was tough to begin with). Or you'll have to game the fight to try to get a different sequence to take place (not that most people would know to do that).

Logged

Secondly--MURDER? Merely because I had planned the duel and provoked the quarrel! Never had I heard anything so preposterous.

No, you would just have to try different tactical approaches until you find one that works. Lead the attack with a different party member, use a different configuration of weapons and/or spells & abilities (as applicable). Or even go and do something else first and come back to the fight later.

I feel like figuring out solutions like these is more satisfying as a player than save-scumming until the RNG aligns adequately in your favor.

I think the possibility of missing streaks should depend on the current hit chance, not on hardcoded number like 3 (may be to easy to exploit). It's really strange when character misses three times in a row with the 70+ to-hit chance, but if it's 20, then very long missing streak is totally correct. Maximum consequent misses count can be depended on skills, also, to prevent exploiting it with saveskumming on low skill levels.

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So we can count consecutive misses and once you hit 3, the next roll is on us and it's a hit!

May be its better not to make guaranteed hit, but adjust hit chance or instantly reroll the attack. Say, if your third attack rolled to miss, then game instantly reroll it, so you still have the chance to take such bad luck, but it whill be much lesser and not so deterministic. Compromise option.

Also, you can use miss limitation not for all attack types. Say, unlimited misses for snap-shots, strongly limited for aimed shots, and moderate for regular attacks.

To my previous posts I would add one more point.Maybe with the percieved unfairness of RNG the actual problem is not a streak of several misses.

Maybe the actual problem is "my chance to hit is 90%. that means i hit 9 times of 10. I just missed 3 times. So it's fair to expect that I will hit ~27 next times."And that's not how it works with the true RNG.Maybe the actual problem is not in the possibility of the player to get extremely unlucky. But in the fact that the world, fate or "honest" RNG does not "compensate" this with a lot of luck later.

My takeaway from this is that actual performance should remain pretty tight to the predicted average while still admitting better and worse games. You accomplish the first part by using a 10 card deck. However, I think your system could be improved by shuffling after 8 draws rather than all 10.

With 10 draws, not only does Alex Smith complete exactly 70% of his every 30 throws, but you will regularly run into scenarios where the next outcome is predetermined.

With 8 draws, Alex Smith completes:5/8 (62.5% completion or 7.5% lower than expected) on 47% of his shuffles6/8 (75% completion or 5% higher than expected) on 47% of his shuffles7/8 (87.5% completion or 17.5% higher than expected) on 7% of his shuffles.Moreover, virtually every draw will still be undetermined before selection.

I like this... outcome isn't predetermined. It prevents the : I have THC of 70, missed three times, now for a killing spree....

Can't believe you're actually asking this. It's like asking, Since the latest batch of children are having trouble learning to read, should we switch to a purely phonetic version of the English language?

Or more precisely, Since an incredibly vocal and relentless 10% of children are complaining, should we change it for everyone?